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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25994341">quite the keeper of you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish'>sapphicish</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Gen, Poppy Does Not Deal With It Well, Poppy Has a Crush, Stream of Consciousness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:47:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,911</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25994341</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Poppy always listens to Olivia, lately. Olivia's gotten something that she doesn't. She's got a handsome beau and a kid all to herself, and the house <i>listens</i> to her it does, with the slow help from her little Nellie, and sometimes Poppy feels like a power is being taken back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Olivia Crain &amp; Poppy Hill, Olivia Crain/Poppy Hill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>quite the keeper of you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>my singular thought going into writing this was 'what if poppy was in love with olivia lol'</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Poppy sometimes thinks – no, knows – that her big old house has fears of its own. What doesn't? Surely just the way her sweet little Olive looks at her can be compared to the shivering of a fragile glass vase right before an earthquake. Objects know too. Objects feel too. All these beautiful rotting walls and high ceilings and damp ropes hanging from stair railings, they know it too. The fear of anything, everything, something, the unknown, the known. Her boy takes advantage of it, banging on the walls and running his little chair into things again and again until the house is all dented and bruised up, and still it stands, so brave and quiet 'til it's not anymore. There's a thunderstorm that comes maybe a year maybe a month maybe a week maybe ten years after sweetest Hugh joins them, and it makes all the windows shake, makes all the glass shatter, and Poppy stands in the center of it all, giggling.</p><p>Sometimes she feels quite alive, and that's one of those times, where the rain doesn't touch her and all the other little spirits in the walls shy away from her laughter, and Poppy spins and spins throughout the house, twirling, humming an old ditty she remembers from the good days, before she began to rot. She does it even without the rain and the storms, sometimes, but it's never as fun. Sometimes Olivia will come out of her precious little red red red room and tell her to stop scaring Abigail. Sometimes it's the girl's mother that does it for her and Poppy doesn't like that, doesn't like her, but she listens anyway because she's a friend of Olive's and any friend of Olive's is a friend of Poppy's, in good theory.</p><p>Poppy always listens to Olivia, lately. Olivia's gotten something that she doesn't. She's got a handsome beau and a kid all to herself, and the house <i>listens</i> to her it does, with the slow help from her little Nellie, and sometimes Poppy feels like a power is being taken back. But then she blinks, and it's all gone, drip-drip-dripping down the drain like all new fresh blood. Poppy stands outside of the room sometimes, pacing back and forth or just leaning there against the door, rattling the doorknob playfully. She can enter any time she likes, but she doesn't. She's a good girl now, a girl that behaves and says her pleases and her thank yous and she doesn't remember when that happened, but she never remembers when anything happens, not really, it all just blurs and blurs and blurs...</p><p>“Poppy,” Olivia says, and Poppy is standing there, picking at the peeling paint of the wall. </p><p>Little Georgina from the kitchen she remembers talking to last, just like this: fidgeting with the girl's wet apron between her fingers and poking at her eyes and pulling on her thin braided hair until poor little Georgina just snapped right in two, sobbed and ran off, and Poppy hadn't even meant to do it! Would you just think about that.</p><p>“Afternoon, doll. Having a nice evening with your Hugh?”</p><p>Olivia frowns at her. “What happened?” Her hand reaches up, frames Poppy's jaw gently, and damn her but she's got such a nice touch, and Poppy's vision is blurring, focusing, way behind Olivia where there's such a pretty sight standing right there all for her, Olivia's Hugh and that big red door all open nice and wide, the insides all shiny and bright. Like nothing she's ever seen, like nothing she'll ever see. The envy eats her right up and spits her right back out.</p><p>They'd call that hysteria – put a needle right through her head, send her flying away...</p><p>Poppy looks down and realizes her hands are all shaky claws on the soft wall, and that makes her smile. The house – her house – knows her so well, letting its walls slip and drip away under her hold, else she'll just be standing there scratching and scratching, listening to the scratches that come back to her all the way across the house. It's not her William, but it's just as good as. Her William is far, far, far away even in these walls. Never here, always there, growing up into his own big darling dream and ambitions. Her and William never see each other anymore, but why would she want to see him when she has her Olivia, and why would he want to see her when he has his little Luke?</p><p>Her house is so good to her.</p><p>Or maybe she is the house, or maybe she's its mama, letting it suckle away at her breast, not even minding one bit when it gnaws the skin raw because that's what mothers do, they soak in their pain like a hot bath and they give all their good parts to their children. Even when their children tear up their breasts, even when they rip out their mother's hair, even when they send her to a nice and early grave.</p><p>Poppy pushes herself away from the wall with the same hand, looking at her fingers until they get all still. She wiggles them in front of Olivia just to show her beautiful girl how good she is now, how she's behaving. “All better.”</p><p>Olivia's eyes are a little distant, and they always are. With her babies, all the way back or forward, outside and inside, she takes such care of her man and her little girl in this big old empty scary house but she's got to take care of the ones outside too. Poppy understands that just so well. Only she doesn't have any little kiddies on the outside, and the ones on the inside, well –</p><p>“Better,” Olivia says softly, but doesn't sound convinced.</p><p>Poppy's one of the ones that still listens to the house, you see, and things have been changing and moving on with Olivia and with Hugh, she knows that much, things are changing. Things haven't changed for a while, but now – well, everything's all different, isn't it? Everything's all upside down. So she knows it when the house is quiet and when Olivia is the only one speaking, this is her darling little Olive, not no one else not nothing else playing its glamorous little tricks on her.</p><p>“Don't you worry, Olive. Everything's jake. Has my boy been bothering you and your man again? You let me know.” Poppy touches the tip of her finger to the tip of Olivia's nose. It crinkles a little under her touch, and oh, damn, she just thinks that's so charming. She wants to kiss that, and the little furrow between her brows too, and everything all over. Her hands tingle with the itch to touch again, touch more, but she stops herself. She's a lady. Ladies stop themselves just like that. “I'll give him a spanking to remember.”</p><p>“He never bothers me, Poppy,” Olivia says, “and if he does, doesn't he have a wonderful set of excuses? He's a child, he doesn't know any better. Not like you.” There she goes, stopping a little, like she hadn't meant to say that, no, not at all.</p><p>It's terrible business, because the thing is that she <i>has</i> said it, there it is all out in the open, floating like a skull on the green surface of a mossy pond, all the rotting skin sluicing right off its cute little porcelain cheeks. Floating like one penny two penny three penny...</p><p>“Poppy?”</p><p>“Have you seen your kiddies lately?” Poppy asks, “You see they might be dead, dying, withering away in their beds, all broken bones and spitting out teeth just as they please, bloody-nailed when they go mad and start scratching up the walls just like...”</p><p>Here she is standing alone, picking at the paint on the wall, and Olivia is gone and away, and Poppy does feel a little poorly about it, she does. Not her poor house, just her, just like it hadn't been her poor house but just her that said the words, because if it was the house well – Olivia would stay and listen, and whine and grit her teeth, and bite through her tongue and spit up on her pretty robe and pull her hair out and pull Poppy's hair out and cry, cry, cry so pretty.</p><p>But it wasn't the house, wasn't the creeping darkness.</p><p>Sometimes it's just Poppy. Sometimes she just has to say: <i>hello, doll, here I am. Here I am, no better no worse than anything else in this damned old house, with its moldy hinges and shaking windows.</i></p><p>Bitter spite, that's what it is, that's what some would call it, but she means it all with love, so it can't be so bad.</p><p>Olivia's ever so sensitive, more than a lot of them in here. She knows that. It's so difficult so very <i>difficult</i> not to reach up and take advantage of that.</p><p>No one here is as pretty as Olivia when she cries.</p><p>Poppy digs and digs at the wall, little pieces caking up under her fingernails, wondering when it'll all come together again. Maybe soon, maybe never again. That's all right, she's got all the time in the world, don't she? Don't they all? That's paradise, that's sleep, that's a peaceful rest at the end of a long day.</p><p>Maybe she'll bake Olivia a nice pie to make up for her cruel streak, and she'll even let Hughie know that he can have a piece too.</p><p>She doesn't bake the pie but she does lurk outside the room she doesn't know how long before the red cracks open a peek, and a hand reaches just right out for her. Olivia's hand, all pale and long and shivering, and Poppy takes it, she does, because what other choice is there? It'd be plain rude to reject it, and sometimes if she thinks very hard about it she feels warmth from Olivia, and warmth's important. She doesn't need it, no no, but she sure does like it.</p><p>“You hear that?” Poppy asks Olivia, listening to the silence on the other side of the door. She can't even see the brightness that's how small the crack is, but she can see all the shadows moving and flitting and stretching under the door, and she likes to think it's sweet little Nellie who she never gets to speak to, reaching out and piecing things together for herself, for Poppy, for her mama.</p><p>Maybe, just maybe.</p><p>“What,” Olivia rasps after a while, a real long while but that's all right, Poppy's got all the time in the world.</p><p>“Just like that,” Poppy says. “Nothing. Our four little walls are sleeping, doll. Time to come out. The sun sure is.”</p><p>The door makes the most eerie creaking noise as Olivia opens it further, further, steps out and into Poppy's spread arms, and Poppy takes her by the hand, links their fingers real tight like lovers do and dances, dances dances dances down the hall, twirling and spinning and twisting. </p><p>“I missed you an awful lot, Olive,” Poppy whispers in her ear, and Olivia turns her out, fingertips clinging, pulling her back in, out, in...</p><p>Olivia never says anything, but when does she ever, she's so awful conflicted, and then it's just Poppy all alone again, dancing alone again, laughing alone again in the dark again.</p><p>That's just fine. Her Olive always comes back to her.</p><p>That's love.</p>
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